The miracle of birth never ceases to amaze and thrill me. Kevin and his girlfriend (no they're not married and I can't say they're going to get married but that seems to be the way of the world these days) had a beautiful and perfect little boy last Tuesday. They named him Talon Douglas - the middle name after Mike - and he's just precious. I spent several days with them after the birth, thinking I would jump in there and do the grandmother thing but truthfully, they didn't need me. Mandy is breast feeding so I was no help with midnight feedings and Kevin was waiting anxiously to take Talon afterwards, for his own bonding time. I managed to elbow in and spend a little quality grandmother time in with the new little guy and then headed home on Friday.
I spent Friday night with my sister, Cindy, in Abilene which is always fun. She's a real riot - we always laugh a lot which is a great stress reliever. She's been on weight watchers for about 3 months and is losing down to toothpick size - actually, she looks really good.
On my way home, Saturday morning, I had the good fortune to lunch with Beverly, our realtor in Brownwood, and got to meet her brand new granddaughter, Henslie, cute as a button!
After lunch, I told Beverly that even though we chose not to respond with a counter offer on the Blanket Creek house, we still find ourselves remodeling parts of it in our heads all the time. Our evening Porchtime always seems to drift back to the "what ifs" about that place. We've continued to look for something else but so far, nothing has had the potential and charm of that one. It's funny how a particular piece of property seems to just get a hold on you and won't go away. The damp basement issue . . . is an issue though. I can't help but think that a remedy is out there for that without taking out a second mortgage!
Just because I was gone didn't mean things slowed down here, for sure. Mike's new sculpture is taking shape nicely. It sounds like the installation date might loosen up by a few days which would be nice since there was a real push to have it completed by the third week of August. In the meantime, Leanin' Tree found one more painting they want by the 10th of July and luckily, it's one Mike has really wanted to do anyway so that canvas is prepared and ready to go.
Our contractor friend, Tracy, is using the rest of the rocks we had left from our patio to rock up part of the back side of the house. Our house has a small turret shaped room off the den that gets a lot of high exposure from the sun, which bleaches out the paint. Tracy is rocking over it and it is really looking sharp!
We got a glimpse of the first line of T-shirts being released by Wyoming West Designs and I have to say, they look pretty darned good. The shirts actually come out in the fall so we'll have some at the Cowboy Christmas show in Vegas this year.
The Mountain is also putting out a line of shirts - a larger line - but I'm not sure exactly what their release date is.
Had friends in from Arizona this morning - Kathleen and Ray Schott. She is a firecracker and has some great ideas for turning some of Mike's work into quilted throw pillows so she left armed and ready to tackle that project. I can't quite envision it yet but she's all fired up and plans to bring some samples to the Vegas show so we'll see. They were property shopping down here - looking for a cowboy town. We sent them straight to Bandera!
